Chief Justice Garman and Justices Karmeier, Burke, and Theis concurred in the
judgment and opinion.

Justice Thomas specially concurred, with opinion, joined by Justice Kilbride.

In 2006, Tiffany Brown, then a Chicago policewoman, entered the Chicago
Patrolmen’s Federal Credit Union and presented for deposit a $1 million check made
out to her which was purportedly drawn by Six Flags Great America on a JP Morgan
Chase bank account. She endorsed it in her own name.

The check was counterfeit and did not make it through the clearing system. The
defendant was charged with several offenses and, at her Cook County bench trial,
testified that her mother had given her the check and had told her that it was the
result of the defendant’s sister’s settlement of a lawsuit which was being passed on,
in part, to the defendant. The sister already had a forgery conviction.

After having been given two years of probation and fifty hours of community
service by the circuit court, the defendant emerged from the appellate court with
convictions for attempted theft by delivering the counterfeit check and for forgery by
making the check. Only the latter conviction is challenged in this appeal to the
Illinois Supreme Court.

In this decision, the supreme court said that the defendant could not be found
guilty of “making” the check. She had argued that she did not “make” the check
when all she did was endorse it in her own name. With this proposition, the supreme
court agreed, noting that, because the check was counterfeit, forgery by “making”
was statutorily complete when the check was created, regardless of endorsement. In
addition, on the question of evidentiary sufficiency, evidence that the defendant
actually made the check is wholly absent from the record.

The conviction for forgery by making the check was reversed, but the conviction
for attempted theft by delivering the check still stands, and the sentencing order was
modified to reflect that it is the sole remaining conviction.